Bloomberg Japan’s unexpected growth spurt in the first quarter masked weakness in the economy just as policy makers prepare to hike the sales tax in October. Gross domestic product expanded an annualised 2.1 percent, but the biggest driver was imports falling even faster than exports, which meant that net exports technically fueled growth in the economy. Declining imports is a ...

Bloomberg First, states across the US ordered utilities to clean up ponds full of toxic coal waste. Now, they’re balking at how much companies want to charge for the work. Officials from Virginia to North Carolina to South Carolina are pushing back on utilities’ plans to charge customers for the costs of shuttering coal-ash ponds, long the primary way of ...

Bloomberg National Grid Plc shares dropped the most in more than a month after it unveiled a decline in adjusted operating profit as the UK network operator rebuffed proposals to nationalise energy assets. The nationalisation proposals “are only going to cause a huge amount of disruption,” Chief Executive Officer John Pettigrew said in an interview. It’s “the last thing you ...